The Bee Sting

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Symbols & Motifs

The Bee Sting

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the novel’s treatment of physical and emotional abuse.

The bee sting, which is important enough to be the title of the novel, is a symbol of the lies told to protect oneself and others from shame. During Imelda’s wedding, she never removes her veil, telling everyone that she is hiding a welt from a bee sting. In reality, she hides the fact that her father punched her in the face on the way to ceremony—a brutal and abusive response to the news that she is pregnant, and one which ends their relationship. When Paddy Jo moves the rest of the family to England, he tells Imelda’s brothers that she has died.

These various lies become a mainstay of Imelda’s life—just as she hides her father’s violence, so too does she work to obscure her background as an adult; just as her father emotionally abused her by putting her sexuality on a pedestal while physically abusing her brothers, so does he continue to emotionally manipulate her by separating her from her brothers.

Through the nonexistent bee sting, Murray considers whether all family mythologies are ultimately based on stories that hide painful truths.

Dublin

In this novel, the cosmopolitan city of Dublin, so different from the close-minded town where Imelda and Dickie grow up, is a symbol of possibility. Sometimes, this possibility is optimistic. Dickie and Cass project their feelings of inferiority onto Dublin, hoping that a change of environment will free them to embrace their innate intellectualism and thirst for freedom from the constraints of hometown. In Dublin, Dickie finds his ideal partner Willie, Cass finds her calling in Willie’s environmental and gay rights activism, and PJ imagines a place to run away to that will allow him to escape from his increasingly fraught home life.

However, Dublin’s threats are not unique, nor does the novel pretend that small town life is safe. While the gossip and boredom that informs the small-town experience can entrap, the diverse possibilities in Dublin don’t necessarily equate to happiness and self-fulfillment—sometimes, they are deeply dangerous. Dickie is beaten nearly to death by a lover there, while PJ is almost abducted by a child predator, and Cass loses herself to her obsession with the unresponsive Elaine.

The Bunker

The shed in the forest behind the Barneses’ house has represented escape for generations of children. Dickie and Frank used to play around the bunker, as did PJ and Cass. In childhood, the bunker was the setting for harmless imaginative games, but as the people who retreat to it grow up, its fantasist appeal assumes a more sinister vibe.

As a teenager, Cass uses the shed to maintain her friendship with Elaine. Elaine and Cass share the shed as their hideaway, but when they invite the seductive Ryszard to the bunker, it becomes the scene of sexual awakening and manipulative games. Ryszard attempts to initiate a threesome, pushing Cass and Elaine to kiss each other. While the suggestion fails, the moment is crucial for Cass, who realizes what her strong feelings for Elaine actually mean.

PJ also uses the shed to maintain his friendship with Nev, as well as a hiding place for the money he saves to run away. Both are dangerous in their own ways: Nev is not a particularly engaged friend to PJ, and PJ’s plan to escape to Dublin relies on the predatory urging of the threatening Ethan.

Finally, Dickie projects his desire for control and his hope for the future onto the bunker, as he and Victor transform the shed into a survivalist encampment for the ecological end times. However, this kind of escapist fantasy is not a productive way to further Dickie’s interest in environmentalism—something the novel shows us by contrasting the bunker projects with Willie’s career. Instead, Dickie’s time in the bunker increases his paranoia and transforms him into the kind of man who decides to shoot Ryszard to end the extortion rather than just reporting him to the police.

At the end of the novel, the bunker becomes a place of real evil, potentially the site of Dickie murdering Ryszard or accidentally shooting his children. The bunker thus becomes the embodiment of the dread that ends the novel.